News

As we continue to deal with an increase in Covid-19, hospitals are having to change the way they deliver services. To ensure that women and their babies have the safest birth possible, hospital trusts across North Central London are putting in new measures. Due to the current impact of the pandemic the London Ambulance Service is no longer in a position to guarantee an ambulance response to those women choosing to plan their birth at home, or within one of the capital’s three stand-alone birth centres. Because of this, regrettably the following trusts are temporarily suspending home birth services.

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing need for us to care for patients requiring urgent, emergency and COVID-19 care, we have unfortunately had to reduce some non-urgent, planned procedures and outpatient services in North Central London.

As a turbulent and challenging 2020 draws to a close there is no let-up in the incredible amount of work going on across North Central London to deliver health and care. We are delighted to say that the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine is now underway commencing at the Royal Free Hospital Hub. From this week, five local vaccine services – one in each borough – have come online, with a further six due to come online later in the week. We are prioritising those most vulnerable to Covid-19, in line with national guidance, focussing on vaccinating over 80s, plus frontline care home and NHS staff.

The NHS has planned extensively to deliver the largest vaccination programme in our history. This will be a huge task. The NHS is working closely in partnership with local councils in Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington to roll out vaccines when the supplies are available. As part of this, the NHS is recruiting extra people, to ensure they can continue to provide the vital health services that we all rely on.

A feature of North Central London’s partnership working and its response to the first wave of Covid-19 is the way we are successfully working together as a health and social care system to deliver the best care possible to those who need it.

To ensure the NHS can continue to deliver the best emergency and planned care across north central London during the winter and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, temporary changes to services for children and young people will commence on 28 September.

We recognise that Covid-19 presents exceptional difficulties and uncertainties for patients and all providers within primary and secondary care are focussed on supporting patients throughout their clinical pathway. We want people to feel safe coming to appointments at hospitals, clinics and at GP surgeries. We appreciate that some people will still be nervous of attending appointments and have committed that in this unprecedented period patients will be kept on the waiting list, if they choose to defer their appointments or procedures. This policy will be reviewed regularly.

The move to an Integrated Care System (ICS) model in NCL means a consistent and coordinated approach to the delivery of services and use of resources. With organisations and teams working in partnership where it improves experience and outcomes for residents. To help us do this, we want to establish ICS leads, who will have responsibility for a portfolio of work across the system. These leads will come from organisations within NCL, but will have accountability for working with system and delivering changes and improvements. We have recently appointed leads for finance and workforce and are delighted to welcome them to the leadership team.

As health and care providers across North Central London (NCL) are increasing planned and routine services, we are working to ensure that we can boost capacity and safely provide testing for NCL’s residents. This includes establishing community phlebotomy hubs across NCL. The first of the new phlebotomy hubs went live this week at Holloway Community Health Centre and will be able to provide an additional 1,500 appointments per week for Haringey and Islington residents. Over the next couple of weeks additional sites will be opened that will provide a similar number of additional appointments for NCL’s other boroughs.

NCL’s system has restarted elective care over the past few weeks and our clinicians have been prioritising care for the most urgent patients based on clinical need. Our infection prevention and control leads across NCL have been working together to implement robust and consistent infection prevention and control measures following national guidance, including physical distancing, face masks for all staff, patients and visitors and appropriate use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). This will ensure our health and care settings are as safe as possible for staff and patients.

In NCL, across London and the rest of the country, NHS staff are finding that, because of worry about coronavirus, people are delaying contacting their GP or going to hospital to discuss a symptom that could indicate a possible cancer. This fear is understandable, but we want to reassure everyone in NCL that doctors and GP teams are still here for their patients. GP practices and hospitals are working differently due to the pandemic, for example offering a telephone consultation or a video chat with a doctor or nurse, instead of a face to face meeting. If patients have to attend in person GP practices are organised to reduce the risk of patients being exposed to any infection. Hospitals have put in place arrangements to maximise physical distancing and to provide the safest possible access to care.

NCL is now ready to restart some of the urgent elective care that had been paused over the past few months, in line with national guidance, to allow health and care professionals to support the increased demand in services due to the pandemic. A great deal of work is ongoing to ensure that we are prepared for the restart of elective activity including putting in place infection prevention and control measures to ensure that we can deliver care as safely as possible.